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The Test Strategist's Toolbox As a decision-making framework, a test strategy outlines the vision and values that drive the project and keeps you on a clear path in times of change or uncertainty. A good test strategy makes you more resilient to inevitable changes as the project progresses. However, each test
project needs its own strategy depending on the business and risk profiles of the applications, technology in use, development methods, and even the experience and culture of the test group. In this interactive session with James Lyndsay, you will learn about a wide range of test strategy
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James Lyndsay, Workroom Productions
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Navigating the Minefield of Open Source Test Tools Each year more and more open source development tools, including test tools, are available. By choosing to use open source test tools, companies expect to save money and take advantage of the community of shared development. Recently, there seems to be an abundance of open source testing tools being released, including tools for automated regression, load testing, test management, and defect tracking. But how do you know which tools are right for you? Based on his real-world experiences using such tools, Jeff Jewell covers the issues that you are likely to encounter as you evaluate open source testing tools. Learn where to find open source test tools, the challenges you
face in choosing these tools, and what you will need to do once you find the right tools. Find out if your organization is ready to use open source tools and how to find the right tools for you.
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Jeff Jewell, ProtoTest LLC
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Testing Inside the Box These days, we hear a lot about unit testing, testing for programmers, test-first programming, and the like. Design techniques for such tests and for improving system testing are often called white box test designs. Join Rex Black as he explains the basics of white box testing and compares
white box with other types of testing. Find out how the metaphor of "boxes" can inform-and confuse-us. Rex discusses the basis path tests, including cyclomatic number as a measure of complexity and a way to determine the number of tests necessary to cover all paths. He walks
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Rex Black, Rex Black Consulting
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Can You Find Bugs in Your Pajamas? Becoming an Effective Telecommuting Tester Distributed development teams, including test engineers, are becoming more the norm than the
exception. Many individual testers and test managers perform some of their job duties from
home. Test engineer Andy Roth is an extreme example of this situation-telecommuting from his
Maryland home 300 miles from his company’s office. As a “tele-tester” Andy has become a
manager in addition to his testing duties, managing his personal test lab, his time, his peer
relationships, and even managing his manager. If you are considering becoming a tele-tester,
already are one, or manage tele-testers, join Andy for a discussion of what it takes to survive and
flourish in this environment. Find out the necessary prerequisites and qualities of successful teletesters
and the tools of the trade that make life easier and most productive.
- The case for tele-testing and its limitations
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Andy Roth, IBM Rational Software
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Applying Use Case-Driven Testing in Agile Development Use Cases provide a user-focused sequence of events that also can serve as a template for functional testing activity. In an agile environment, use case-based testing brings testing earlier into the process and helps teams more quickly deliver higher levels of functionality to their customers. Testing with use cases also provides early peer review for the logic of intended functions. Involving testers in use case development and harvesting use case scenarios for test case development has shown great practical benefit in numerous application development projects. Dean Leffingwell describes the use case-based testing method and highlights practical tips for applying the technique. Learn to employ use cases to express functional requirements and how use case scenarios can serve as templates for testing activities.
- An overview of use case development practices
- Accelerating test development with use cases
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Dean Leffingwell, Consultant
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It's Too Darn Big: Test Techniques for Gigantic Systems Structuring test designs and prioritizing your test effort for large and complex software systems are daunting tasks, ones that have beaten many, very good test engineers. If you add concurrency issues and a distributed system architecture to the mix, some would simply throw up their hands. At Microsoft, where Keith Stobie plies his trade, that is not an option. Keith and others have reengineered their testing, employing dependency analysis for test design, model property static checking, "all pairs" configuration testing, robust unit testing, and more. They employ coverage to successfully help select and prioritize tests and make effective use of random testing including fuzz testing security. Finally, models of their systems help them generate good stochastic tests and act as test oracles for automation.
- Test checklists for large, complex, distributed systems
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Keith Stobie, Microsoft Corporation
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Quality Interactions: Bulding Effective Working Relationships As software professionals, we all care about quality. We focus our efforts on building quality into the code and testing to assess quality and find errors before our customers do. However, there is an important element of quality that comes before all that and is critical to delivering reliable software: quality working relationships and quality interactions. Esther Derby covers pragmatic strategies for building, strengthening, and maintaining working relationships with all stakeholders-managers, customers, team members, and peers. The first step is to build a foundation of trust and respect. Then, we must focus on interests rather than positions and seek joint solutions to problems. We should use the richest communication channel available for our interactions and make a generous interpretation of others’ actions.
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Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates Inc
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Plans, Processes, and Practices for Successful Test Outsourcing There are many reasons why outsourcing IT activities requires extra attention, especially when it concerns software testing. Examples of complete failures are common, and "backsourcing" is not uncommon today. Outsourcing test activities requires a comprehensive planning roadmap from the initial idea to implementation steps and ongoing processes. Martin Pol discusses creating a service level agreement for test outsourcing, managing the transition, approaches for cultural adjustments, and ways to monitor the outsourced work. An outsourcing relationship can be compared to a marriage, from the initial flirting through matrimonial happiness. Faith, flexibility, and openness based on trust are required for both a happy marriage and a successful outsourcing relationship. The difference is that outsourcing requires arrangements for ending the relationship before the wedding.
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Martin Pol, POLTEQ IT Services BV
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STARWEST 2004: Interpersonal Skills for Working with Business Stakeholders As a professional test manager or test engineer, you must keep up with the latest test techniques, management practices, and systems technologies. But that is not enough. You also must interact with and, more importantly, learn to influence executive managers and other non-technical project stakeholders. Even today in many companies, testing and test management are not well understood, and their work is unappreciated by non-technical people. Now, it is time for you to take action and do more than simply "get along" in your organization. Join Robert Sabourin for a lively session on developing your hidden and interpersonal skills, including communication, persuasion, problem solving, and teamwork. Find out new ways to work harmoniously with non-technical people while getting your important testing job done efficiently and effectively.
- How to use individual differences and perspectives to your best advantage
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Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.Com Inc
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A Systematic View of User Acceptance Testing Acceptance testing is a vital and specific form of testing whether you are tasked with rolling out an enterprise application package, releasing a major system enhancement, or developing acceptance tests in an agile development project. In addition, acceptance tests can give some teeth to service level agreements and software acquisition contracts. However, most treat acceptance testing as the same activity as system testing-but done by different staff. That is wrong! Because acceptance testing is not about bug hunting and breaking the software, you need a different strategy. With over 25 years of experience covering acceptance testing for all types of systems from safety critical control systems to standard financial applications, Geoff Quentin shares his views on how to do acceptance testing correctly.
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Geoff Quentin, QBIT Ltd
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